For many architects, building codes are seen as a dry, boring part of the design process. But as building code changes over the past century have shown, the dense documents can actually be a battleground for a better society, Taubman College’s Ann Lui argues in a new essay.

For example, after heavy debate and controversy in the public realm, single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms were allowed in the 2021 edition of the International Plumbing Code, a model code adopted by most U.S. cities, notes Lui, assistant professor of practice in architecture and founding principal of Future Firm, a Chicago-based architecture and design research practice. This is only one of many examples of the ways activism has led to changes in the building code around issues of worker safety, accessibility, consumer protection, sustainability, and civil rights. 

“The building code can be read as an archive of activism, of rights fought for and agreed upon, and of near infinite opportunities for improvement in a societal-scale effort toward constructing a universally safe — and therefore more equitable — built environment,” she writes.

Lui’s essay, titled “Building Code as Battleground: Activism, Amendments, and (Co)Authorship,” appears in Harvard Design Magazine.

Since their origins in the late 1800s, building codes have been a site of co-authorship, reflecting the implementation of new measures to protect public safety and accommodate changing social norms, Lui writes. Yet while architects, policymakers, and advocates have worked together to redefine the values governing building law, challenges exist today that limit this kind of engagement. The essay explores how privatization of the code, problematic copyright enforcement, as well as “hidden deals” governing who holds seats on the important committees recommending code changes, need to be reformed through more robust public engagement. 

“While the field of architecture is often constrained in its capacity to effect social change,” Lui writes, “the building code, for all its wonkiness, has been the site where architects have been able to stand shoulder to shoulder with civil rights activists throughout the past 150 years.”